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User blog:Bern Unit/Bern Unit - Prepare For Take Off
Bern gathered his strength back and looked down on his sister lying in the hospital bed “when you wake up sis, we are going to have a lot to talk about….” He then walked out the hospital into the streets. It was dark, cold and late. Bern was still trying to organize his head; he was going back and forth between his sister’s condition and the thought of taking someone’s life. Rather than taking to the sky, Bern felt it better to walk, the sound of his feet on the pavement seemed to ground him a little more than he had been in the last several hours. He came across a familiar site from his past….a bar. Bern looked at the glowing letters about the door and like a moth to a flame he started heading for the door. He reached for the handle with his shaking hand. The anger, the pain, the confusion and the loneliness were consuming him and he just wanted to feel still for a moment or two. Before his hand could reach the handle his hand closed tight, “No……you won’t do this Berny….there are other options” he said to himself. He closed his eyes, frozen for a moment there on the steps of the bar he hand walked in and crawled out of so many times. He turned and walked the other way. In his horizontal hike through the Metropolis night Bern came across another building he had seen at least the outside of many a time…..a church. Bern looked at the massive doors to the gothic looking structure. This one was a little harder for him to walk into. It had been a long time since he stepped food on holy ground. He laughed a little to himself and thought “what if I burst into flames??” The laughter seemed to lighten the emotional load and he stepped into the building. He looked around at a few people scattered amongst the pews. Bern sat towards the back and looked up to the front at the alter and massive statues of angels, his eyes focused on the large stained glass window above it all, the moon light just ever so lightly peeking through and casting intricate designs on the walls and floor. Bern sat their quietly in the silence, closed his eyes and thought about the last few days, about his sister, his niece, about what he did to Cold and Pieper. What felt like a few moments later, Bern felt a tap on his shoulder, when he awoke he saw a priest standing next to the pew he sat in. “Are you okay my son?” Bern looked around; many of the people that were there when he came in had left. He shook the sleep off of him “Um..yeah, I guess so…..how long have I been here?” The priest looked at Bern and said “about 3 hours…..you seemed to be having a bad dream my boy…” Bern moved to let the priest sit next to him. “What troubles you mind my son?” The priest was an older man, appearing roughly in his 60’s, a weathered face that Bern would believe head many secrets and stories, the man’s salt and pepper hair was a little longer, near his shoulders, his thing frame held up a suit that was meant for a man a little bigger than him. Bern began to explain everything from the fight with his mother all the way up to leaving the hospital hours ago. Bern explained his past, the drinking, the guilt and shame that he carried with it. He went on to discuss the fear and anger he struggled with about his present place in the world. The priest just sat and listened, when Bern was done speak the priest nodded “well, it seems like you have been on quite the journey dear boy. You must be a very strong person to have not let these hardships overcome you. We all have been and will be faced with trials and hardships, being scared or being angry is not anything that would make you different from the rest of us. They are feelings, a way for our body to let us know when we are uncomfortable or do not like something. It is our behaviors that we engage in that can become the problem for us and others around us.” Bern nodded as the priest spoke; his words offered a sense of calm to him that he hadn’t felt in a while. Having certain things normalized for him allowed him to shed some of the things that he was holding onto for some time. The priest looked at Bern and added “You have been given a purpose from your journey to this place in time. You have a gift, though at times it may not always feel like it. I have seen others come here in similar ways, each with their own gifts, and each with their own purpose. The path may not all be revealed at this time but if you stop and look around you, perhaps the path will clear a little more.” Bern took in the words of the priest and nodded again. He had overcome much in his life and was still able to stand up and move forward. Bern looked at the priest “Thank you father, I appreciate your time…..What do I do about my niece….? I mean, I don’t know where to even begin…if I go after the man who I know was responsible for her disappearance I might not be able to control myself….” The priest nodded “It is a difficult road you are on and the choices you will make will set things in motion for you. I cannot and will not tell you do harm another person. What I can offer is this….a ship will look for a port in any storm” The priest stood up and nodded to Bern “Good luck to you my son, I must be off now.” Bern left the church with the words of the priest stuck in his head, “A port in any storm???” He took to the skies and perched himself atop one of the buildings nearby to gain a better view of the city. “What the hell was he trying to say?” Bern couldn’t seem to shake the words of the priest, “A ship, is he saying something about the docks?” and with that he headed for the waterfront hoping to maybe find a clue or something that would make the priest’s words make a little more sense to him. Not knowing what he would find he took to examining every bit of area where a ship might dock. Bern came across a crane used to load large freight or cargo ships, what stuck out to him about this is that the crane wasn’t positioned over an area where a cargo ship would dock, it was positioned right over the wall into the water, easy enough for a smaller boat to park and have something loaded onto it. Bern used his thermal vision to inspect the area and found a few things of interest to him. The first being that the gears on the crane were warm showing that they had recently been used, the second was the water; faint heat trail from whatever boat’s engine was visible and showing that it took off towards Bloodhaven. Bern saw a dock worker nearby and took some time to speak with him. Bern swooped down in front of the unsuspecting worker and grabbed him by his collar. Bern was careful to not transmit any of his heat through his gear on to the worker’s clothes or his skin. This was something that Bern became extra aware of since his last encounter with Cold and Pieper. Keeping focus on what he wanted to do in the moment was crucial and could mean the difference between someone becoming incinerated or being left unscathed. “I need to know where that boat was headed and what it was carrying”, Bern’s voice was stern. The dock worker shocked and nervous replied “Aye, look man, I don’t know, I just load them with what I am told and I don’t’ ask any other questions”. Bern’s eyes shot a bright white “You and I both know this was not a scheduled pickup or drop off so I am going to ask you again….what was it and where did it go? If I have to ask you again your co-workers are going to need a broom to sweep you up in the morning.” The dock worker began to smell smoke from his singing collar “Okay, okay man….just put me down…” Bern released the worker and he began blubbering “It was a Lex Corp. boat but it wasn’t one of their company freights, it was a smaller boat of some kind, they just had two smaller boxes loaded on it, I swear I don’t know what was on them, the truck dropped them off and within the hour the boat was here for pick up, they paid me and I loaded them….that’s it man…I swear.” “Where was it headed?!” Bern demanded. The dock worker squealed “I head the driver say something about some Air Force base….something about there being hospital facilities there and the equipment needing to be ready when they arrive.” Bern knew that the only Air Force base nearby was Ferris and that there was a good chance in those containers were his niece and probably exobytes that Luthor planned to use in some sick experiment where Luanne was the guinea pig. Bern took a swing at the large freight container next to him and sent it hurling out into the waters. With that Bern took to the skies and headed for the Ferris. Bern thought and a smirk came to his face “maybe I can let off some steam there and go a few rounds with some more yellow lanterns” as he recalled the sound of Arkillo’s finger snapping. ~To be continued~ Category:Blog posts